Floor three was attrition.

  A corridor stretching beyond sight, walls lined with alcoves from which mana-construct enemies emerged in waves. Bronze scarabs the size of dogs, mandibles sparking with mana-discharge, pouring from alcoves in groups of four, then six, then eight, with fifteen-second intervals between waves.

  "Healer check," Mara said flatly. She'd identified it instantly. "Sustained damage, sustained healing, sustained mana expenditure. The Tower wants to see if I can keep us alive for the long haul."

  "Can you?"

  Something fierce and frightened and absolutely determined lived behind her eyes. The same look she'd worn during the breach, kneeling in a garrison corridor with Torrin's blood on her hands and her [Triage Sense] locked onto his signature and her body refusing — for the first time in her life, *refusing* — to let the fear win.

  "Walk," she said. "I'll keep you walking."

  They walked. The scarabs came.

  Torrin was a wall — literally, his body filling the corridor's width, fists crushing constructs as they arrived. His AGI was useless here. His STR was everything. Each punch sent bronze fragments scattering. But the waves did damage. Small bites. Mana-spark burns. Mandible cuts that individually were minor and collectively were drowning.

  Mara healed. Hands on Torrin's back between waves, the rose-gold light flowing, her MP draining at a rate Jace tracked with growing concern. She worked differently now than she had at the start of the year — her [Triage Sense] running continuously, reading Torrin's damage through mana-resonance, her channeling targeted and precise. Not a drop of mana wasted. The months of training showed. The breach had forged something that training alone couldn't.

  But efficient and infinite weren't the same thing.

  Jace worked the flanks. When scarabs slipped past Torrin — small and fast, designed to exploit gaps — Jace intercepted. The Subway Fang was effective: the constructs were small enough for AGI-based strikes to find their cores, and *Vermin Bane* resonated with dungeon-born constructs. Each kill cost SP. Each dodge cost SP.

  By the corridor's midpoint, he was down to a quarter of his stamina. His [Endurance] kept him functional past the point where his body wanted to quit, distributing fatigue across muscle groups with Journeyman efficiency. The scar burned — shadow-tainted tissue misfiring under sustained exertion, sending cold-hot-wrong signals through his core.

  "Mara," Elara said from the rear. "Your MP?"

  "Thirty-eight percent."

  "The corridor extends at least another hundred meters. At current drain rate, you'll be empty in approximately three minutes."

  "I can *feel* that, Elara."

  Jace made a decision. "Mara. Stop healing."

  Both women looked at him.

  "Let Torrin take the damage. His HP pool is the biggest. He can absorb for two minutes without dropping to critical. Use the window to regenerate."

  "If I stop and a wave gets through—"

  "I'll cover the overflow."

  Mara's hands stopped glowing. Her MP began to recover — slowly, the natural regeneration of a [Medic] class built for sustained output. She stood behind Torrin, hands clenched, watching his HP decrease with each wave, the healer's instinct screaming at her to channel, to *help* — and she held. Because Jace had asked her to. Because she trusted the math even when it terrified her.

  Two minutes. Torrin's HP dropped through fifty percent. Forty-five. A scarab got past — Jace intercepted, took a mana-spark burn that he couldn't afford. He paid it anyway.

  "Now."

  Mara's hands flared. The rest had given her channels time to cool. She poured healing into Torrin, brighter and faster.

  They rotated. Two minutes healing, one minute rest. The rhythm found itself — Torrin absorbed, Mara sustained, Jace plugged gaps, Elara counted waves and tracked resources with the detached precision of someone who understood that the numbers were the only thing between them and the corridor's grinding victory.

  The corridor ended. The last wave died.

  They stood in the transition space, breathing hard. Torrin's armor shredded with shallow cuts. Mara grey-faced, MP in the teens. Jace's SP in single digits. Elara unscathed physically, her expression carrying the strain of twenty minutes watching her friends bleed while she did the hardest intellectual work of her life.

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  "Two floors left," Jace said. "Then the boss."

  They climbed.

  * * *

  Floor four was silence.

  The chamber was dark. Not amber glow — genuinely dark. A thick, smothering absence of light that swallowed everything beyond arm's reach. The ticking was gone. The mechanical sounds that had accompanied every previous floor had ceased.

  In the silence, sounds became threats. The scuff of Torrin's boots. Mara's breathing. Jace's heartbeat, suddenly the loudest thing in the universe.

  "I can't see," Torrin said. Assessment, not fear.

  "None of us can," Elara said. "The Tower has suppressed ambient mana-light. My glasses require visual input. I'm effectively blind."

  Jace understood what this was. The Tower had observed that Elara's analytical capability was their primary navigational tool — so it eliminated the conditions that made analysis possible.

  "It's testing my role," Jace said quietly. "The pivot. The gap-filler. It took away Elara's eyes. Let's see if I have something to replace them."

  He activated [Mana Sense].

  Four MP per second. His pool was at sixteen. Four seconds of active perception. Four seconds to map the room, find the path, identify the threat.

  The world lit up — not in light, but in *awareness.* Shapes rendered in density, movement in flux, objects defined by their relationship to mana currents. The chamber was circular. The floor was unbroken. But the air was full of obstacles: force-field walls, invisible to the eye but solid to the body. A maze built from compressed energy alone.

  And in the maze, something moved. A construct — smaller than the sentries, faster, designed for speed and silence. A hunter built for the dark.

  He killed [Mana Sense]. Darkness returned. Three seconds of perception. Twelve MP remaining.

  "Invisible maze. Force-field walls. And there's something in there with us — fast and stealthy." He paused. "Nobody moves unless I say. I'll pulse [Mana Sense] to map our path. Short bursts. Three seconds, then dark for about a minute."

  The silence that followed was the particular silence of three people realizing that their survival depended on a [Vagabond]'s ability to navigate an invisible maze in three-second snapshots while something hunted them between pulses.

  "Stay close," Jace said. "Hold on to each other. There's no shame in it."

  Mara's hand found his elbow. Torrin's hand found Mara's shoulder. Elara placed her hand on Torrin's arm. A chain. Connected.

  They moved through the maze in bursts of illumination separated by eternities of blind faith. Jace counted steps. Memorized turns. Built a mental map from snapshots connected with inference and guesswork and the desperate problem-solving his class had been built for.

  The hunter found them twice. The first time, Jace sensed it during a pulse — close, closing fast — and shoved the group into a force-field alcove. The hunter shot past. The second time, it came from an unmapped direction, and only Torrin's instinct saved them. His fist lashed out in the dark, guided by sound alone, and connected with something that shattered into bronze fragments.

  "Got it," Torrin said.

  "You punched in the dark and *hit?*"

  "Heard it. Smelled the mana. Swung." A pause. "Some things don't need eyes."

  The maze ended. Green light flooded the space — sudden, blinding. Jace blinked. His MP was at four. The scar was a line of frozen fire.

  The staircase to the fifth floor was before them. Through the amber glow above, something massive shifted and ground — gears and articulated plate, the sound echoing down with patient inevitability.

  The Floor Boss.

  "Resources," Jace said. His voice was hoarse.

  Mara checked. "HP: all of us functional but banged up. Torrin worst — the scarab damage is lingering, sixty-five percent. My MP at thirty percent — maybe five minutes of continuous channeling."

  "Torrin's SP?"

  "Forty. I'm fine — haven't been burning much."

  "Elara?"

  "MP at sixty. Full rune inventory minus the four strips I used on floors one and two. Eighteen remaining."

  Jace did his own math. HP: eighteen, the effective maximum reduced by the shadow-taint's persistent drain on his regeneration. SP: eleven. MP: four.

  Terrible. He was entering a boss fight with less than half his maximum in any pool. The Wayfaring penalty ensuring every ability cost half again what it should. The scar eating into his HP ceiling.

  He had the Subway Fang. He had [Skill Mimicry] available — the cooldown had reset since floor one. He had [Frost Cantrip] and [Fire Cantrip] if he could scrape together fifteen MP for either. He had [Taunt] through mimicry. He had [Footwork: Evasion] and [Improvised Combat] at Journeyman. He had Analysis. He had everything and nothing.

  "Five minutes," he said. "Rest. Recover what you can."

  They sat on the floor and breathed and waited and didn't talk about what was waiting above because talking wouldn't change what it was. Jace closed his eyes. Let his MP regenerate. Each point returning like a drop of water filling a cup. In five minutes: roughly eight MP recovered. One cantrip. Maybe.

  *Lucky.* He almost laughed. Jinx. The kid things went wrong around.

  He opened his eyes. Looked at his team.

  Mara doing breathing exercises — the meditation technique her mother had taught her, designed to accelerate Healer MP regeneration. Eyes closed, breathing rhythmic, the rose-gold glow flickering at her fingertips like embers being coaxed to life.

  Torrin with his back against the wall, eyes open, staring at nothing. Conserving energy the way a stone conserves heat.

  Elara writing. Notes from the maze floor. Even now, even here, she couldn't stop *learning.*

  *Let's finish this.*